How different do you think the rights of children are from those of adults? Should parents be able to legally abort their new-born infants? Should they be able to legally sell them to others? What about torture?
Rothbard: “We must therefore state that, even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a “trustee” or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child’s rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc.”
How does a right to self-ownership follow from a child’s being a separate entity?
my personal perspective would be that babies and young children are not selfowners , they do not take moral responsibility. they are not moral agents. (they only have a potential to be agents in the future )
The younger the human being, the less capable of granting or withholding consent. So they actually start out with no rights. No wrong has been committed unless a being has the ability to grant or withhold consent, and then withholds consent.
Parents should be able to legally torture their children. However, there are quite a few things to stop them from torturing their children. First of all, is nature. People generally do not have children just to torture them. Second of all, is the fact that children have two parents. If one parent does not consent to torturing the child, then that parent’s rights will have been violated. Lastly, is the fact that we all die, and someone who is known to torture his or her children may soon end up finding his or her self dead.
And in conclusion, the law does not magically stop people from doing anything. There are plenty of stories of people killing their own children. Usually he or she will kill his or her self as well in the process.
Yes. Unborn children do not have the ability to grant or withhold consent. Not only that, it makes abortions much more dangerous. Lastly, it is of great risk for a doctor to perform abortions anyways, even if it is legal. A doctor in the U.S. was recently murdered that performed abortions, even though it is legal. Lastly, there probably are not many doctors that would perform abortions. They usually want to save lives, not destroy them.
Of course!!! They would probably end up in much better homes. The really tough question is when do children acquire the ability to grant or withhold consent. My guess is younger than the current age of 18.
It doesn’t. It follows from the ability to grant or withhold consent.
That is the only way we know if a wrong has been committed. When has a baby ever consented to being killed by another human, having sex with another human, or being tortured by another human?
You kept saying this in the animal rights thread, but it never made sense to me. Would you consider it OK to kill an orphan vagrant toddler? Such a toddler cannot grant or withhold consent, and has no parents or guardians, so apparently according to your reasoning we cannot know if a wrong has been committed.
Or if someone punched you in your sleep, would you think that was fine, since at the time you were unable to grant or withhold consent? Say they tried waking you for several minutes, but you were fast asleep. If your answer is that they should wait until you wake up and are able to give consent, why shouldn’t the torturing parents likewise be required to wait until the child is old enough to grant or withhold consent to being tortured?
When I say “has the capability of granting or withholding consent”, I mean the mental capacity. Someone who is asleep still has the mental capacity.
The problem with the word “torture”, is that lack of consent is implied. Let’s use “beat the child”, instead. So, I think you make a good point. My question to you though, is who has been wronged, if the child cannot tell us whether or not he or she did not want to be beaten? I have heard grown men say they were glad their father beat them, because it made them into better men…
Again, the only way we know a wrong has been committed, is if someone has the mental capacity to grant or withhold consent, and withholds consent.
Rights have nothing to do with being able to grant consent or to make moral judgments. Rights are innate in human beings by their virtue of being human.
In a libertarian society it is possible that a parent could torture or murder their child and not receive punishment, but the lack of punishment doesn’t make the behavior moral. Even though a child, baby or fetus cannot defend itself or make moral judgments it is still a human and has rights.